Pamela Mahoney reveals the dark side of egg-freezing

Author of the award-winning book, Silent Sorority, Pamela Mahoney Tsigdinos works in the venture capital and tech sectors. She reveals that she has gone through various fresh and frozen embryo transfers and was disappointed every time. She adds that out of 1.5 million IVF procedures each year, 1.2 million fail.

So essentially, assuming that the body clock is now redundant and the egg-freezing can delay pregnancy without any adverse effects is not exactly true. Mahoney adds that there is no long-term data tracking available on the health risks of women who inject hormones or undergo egg retrieval.

She also points out that there is no research that can prove what amount of chemicals used in the freezing process are absorbed by eggs, and if they are toxic to cell development. Moreover, the most comprehensive data available reveals that there is a 77 % failure rate of frozen eggs that results in live births in women aged 30, and a 91 % failure rate in women aged 40.

The award-winning author describes in detail the highly complicated and painful and uncomfortable procedure. She also informs that after the procedure one needs to pay an annual fee, ranging from $500 to $1000 to store the eggs. The procedure, that includes injecting hormones, can seriously damage one’s physical and mental health as well.

Talking about her personal experience, she reveals in Wired, “After my IVF trials failed, none of the clinics bothered to follow up to find out how I was doing, not even after the loss of alpha pregnancies. They were too busy selling to the next consumer — complete with collateral boasting pictures of women cradling babies.”

Mahoney adds, “The unrelenting focus on commercial returns means there are no consumer protections in place for the customers buying these expensive services. When it comes to reproductive medicine it is buyer beware.”

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